Move git repository

by Max Rohde, Fri, 05 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes it is necessary to move the location of a git repository; be it from one GitHub repo to another or moving a repo from GitHub to Bitbucket. This can be surprisingly tricky since one needs to make sure to include all branches, tags, etc. when copying the data.

Thankfully git magic allows doing this fairly easily. Just run the following commands:

git clone --mirror cd git remote add new-origin git push new-origin --mirror

That should be it!

Note that if you are copying a GitHub repo you might get lovely messages such as the following. That should be fine and nothing to worry about.

! [remote rejected] refs/pull/1/head -> refs/pull/1/head (deny updating a hidden ref) ! [remote rejected] refs/pull/10/head -> refs/pull/10/head (deny updating a hidden ref) ! [remote rejected] refs/pull/100/head -> refs/pull/100/head (deny updating a hidden ref) ! [remote rejected] refs/pull/101/head -> refs/pull/101/head (deny updating a hidden ref) ! [remote rejected] refs/pull/102/head -> refs/pull/102/head (deny updating a hidden ref)